


all my children can become me

by strangesmallbard



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 12:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangesmallbard/pseuds/strangesmallbard
Summary: Everything slips away, even the world from one to the next, but Lyra is her own thing to shape.
Relationships: Marisa Coulter & Lyra Belacqua
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	all my children can become me

**Author's Note:**

> canon compliant except i didn't read the prequel and definitely made some stuff up! ruth wilson's mrs. coulter is terrifying, y'all. so is her brain.
> 
> title is from "smother" by daughter

Lyra was perfect when she was born. A prone creature no harder to control than her own arm; move her little hand that way and it goes there, turn her on her side and she looks at the new world in wonder.

Then she cried. A baby’s first cry is a sacred thing of course of course. Lyra tucked her little arms safely away from comfort and Marisa ached for any maternal instinct to snap on, if only to shut her up.

But Lyra is hers now. Hers. Everything slips away, even the world from one to the next, but Lyra is her own thing to shape. Her dæmon will prove an issue, just like how Ozymandias clung to her shoulder in his lemur form until she tossed him out a window with a shriek, her own shoulder stinging at the marrow from the effort. Marisa made him stay there all night long, watching her from the trees.

And Lyra would learn, as she did. Small attachments mean nothing when the world is as large as it is, when men are stupid as they are. Marisa enjoys the Authority’s world, and her top floor apartment just a bit more.

(Paste on a smile. Wait for everything to fall into place. Everything would.)

Lyra dives onto her shiny new bed with a delighted yell and Ozymandias looks on with a carefully tepid curiosity. Marisa can read him, of course she can. Her hand curls by her side and he stills. A smile curls on her lips before she can notice. Or no, it doesn’t curl. It settles. It creeps. She remembers the crying. She will always remember the crying.

She wipes it away. Lyra is a wild thing, but Marisa—smarter than her father, smarter than anyone she will ever meet—can see the edge of a forest, want to look beyond, and know the right moment to pull back. The many worlds will cower and bend to God when she is done, and the men who love to smile will stare in awe.

The children are hardly a sacrifice, but Lyra—Lyra who’s safe, no not safe, settled and growing (at home) now. Lyra who will never leave again, who’s hers hers hers (until she won’t be until Marisa must push her from—)

Well. A sacrifice is what a prophecy gnaws to the bone. And Marisa remembers the crying.


End file.
